Manipulative and unabashedly sentimental, The Choir carries loud echoes of other better movies.

The notes of this tune are tear-jerkingly familiar, and there's never any doubt about the final chorus, replete with a descant line of convenient illness and last-minute substitution.

Sure, the plot points are in place - mother's alcoholism, mother's death, father's rejection - but the film spends all of 30 seconds on each arc, successfully draining Stet's story of any poignancy and passion.

Director François Girard does a nice job of moving the plot from A to B but, like the beautiful music featured on the soundtrack, is a bit too harmonious, too conventional in the telling of the story.